Operations performed in a storage facility, such as a warehouse or a retail store's storage area, often require that storage containers are collected from storage racks in a predetermined order. For example, a desired sequence of containers may be collected for loading onto pallets or for loading onto trucks.
Also, containers may be collected from storage racks to perform order picking operations that involve extracting ordered goods from collected containers, and placing the goods in one or more containers to prepare a customer's order. Containers may be supplied to a human picking operator or a picking device in a predetermined sequence so as to enable the operator or picking device to sequentially pick items required to fulfill orders. An order may include multiple products that should be packed in a specific sequence. For example, heavy products need to be placed at the bottom of the container, while lightweight products may be placed after the heavy products. In this case, to efficiently fulfill the order, it would be desirable for each order to provide a picker with containers with the heavy products before containers with the lightweight products.
Further, it would be convenient to provide a picker with containers in a predefined sequence so as to enable the picker to place some items of an order separately from other items. For example, frozen products have to be placed separately from fresh products, food items need to be placed separately from chemical items, etc.
Conventional storage systems involve complex and expensive equipment for collecting containers in a desired order. Therefore, it would be desirable to develop a new storage arrangement in which a desired sequence of containers can be collected using inexpensive devices in an efficient manner so as to reduce the logistics cost.